Technological advances made over the past few decades in digital computers have led to improvements in related technologies such as digital audio recording devices. These “solid state” digital recording devices have provided many improvements over older analog recording devices. For example, analog audio recording devices typically utilize electro-mechanical measures to drive a tape or some other form of moving recording media. Since newer digital recording devices do not have to mechanically move the recording media, recordings can be located and replayed quickly without having the fast forward or rewind the tape, disc or recording media.
One shortcoming of audio recording devices is their inability to provide effective labels or titles to the numerous recorded segments that can be stored by the device. Some digital recorders allow recorded audio data to be downloaded to a personal computer where the segment of recorded audio can be stored as file, and a name or title can be entered as a file name by entering keystrokes on the keypad of the personal computer. Also many hand held recorders will auto assign a file number to a recorded segment. For example, a recorded may assign a file name of A10 or DS200 to a recorded segment.
When a user attempts to locate a stored file on the recorder, these “canned” or generic file numbers have no subject matter correlation with the contents of the recorded audio. Locating a recorded segment often requires the user to listen to excerpts of the numerous recordings to locate a particular recording because it is hard to associate a generic file name, such as A101 with a particular subject matter. Generally, it is difficult to locate a desired recording unless a user has manually recorded times, dates, counter data, the type of subject matter and other information in a log. Even with a handwritten or typed log it is often difficult for an individual to efficiently retrieve the desired recorded subject matter.